


Five Time Bucky Wore Makeup (And One Time Someone Else Did)

by Bouzingo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel
Genre: 1940s and WWII segments, 5+1 Things, Genderqueer Bucky, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Peggy Carter, nothing too graphic but hydra's shittiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 14:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bouzingo/pseuds/Bouzingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky likes makeup and that's one thing that never really changes about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Time Bucky Wore Makeup (And One Time Someone Else Did)

“You gotta sit still,” Steve says, frowning and pulling the mascara away from Bucky’s face. “I’m liable to put your eye out if you don’t.”

Bucky grins, but stills himself when Steve crosses his arms. Half-finished singles of blush and stubs of lipstick, all carefully preserved and rubbed down at the top, litter the table beside them and Bucky’s lips are a deep cerise.

“I’m pleased as punch that you got that job, Stevie, but why’d you gotta to doll me up again?” he says.

“Cause I have to get used to the canvas,” Steve says. “Painting a queen ain’t like painting on paper. And they’re only gonna pay me if I do it better than they would on themselves. Close your eyes.”

“What colour are you going to do ‘em?” Bucky asks, eyes closing gently.

“We got black and dark grey,” Steve says, and Bucky can hear a smile perking on his lips.

Getting painted like a dame feels good, but Bucky is pretty sure that it’s because Steve’s hand is on his cheek keeping him steady and he’s gentle with the brush on his eyes. It feels good to have Steve’s undivided attention, too, and given how busy they’ve both been lately, that’s been happening less and less.

“There, you’re done,” Steve says, and Bucky opens his eyes, aware that his eyelashes feel heavier, and actually get into his line of sight somewhat.

“Am I a pretty girl?” he asks. Steve laughs, pulls out a mirror.

“See for yourself, jerk,” he says.

The makeup is very theatrical, but it’s been applied by Steve’s expert unshaking hand. Bucky can’t really recognize himself, but the look, exaggerated cheekbones and lips and eyes, is interesting somehow. Bucky doesn’t know how interesting, and isn’t keen on figuring it out just now.

“You going to wash it off?” Steve asks quietly.

“And wash away all your hard work?” Bucky says. “Nah. This evening, you’re stuck with it, Steve.”

“Well fine,” Steve says. “Next time I’m going to see if I can’t bum some more colours. Wanna try green and blue on you.”

\--

The doctor tells him he should go back home. Bucky, whose hands are still shaking deep in his pockets and who is seeing far too many colours for a guy of even his good eyesight, refuses categorically. He wills his hands to stop shaking and goes to the bar with Steve instead.

Agent Carter, _Peggy_ , seems to understand why his hands shouldn’t shake. She’s served, waded through the mud just like he has. That’s why when Steve asks, in the blushing brash way he asks for everything, if Bucky would like to be a part of whatever it is Steve and Peggy have, Bucky accepts without a second thought. He loves Steve, and maybe he always has, but it’s so good to trace your own experiences on someone else’s skin.

And so they’re in her private room. Steve is gone on a mission with Morita and Dugan, and Bucky’s recovering from a couple of busted ribs. Peggy’s jealously hoarded makeups litter the surface of her dressing table, and she’s cleaning the stuff off her face. She looks different without red lips and kohled eyes, not less beautiful, just different.

She sees him watching her through the mirror, and turns around.

“You always chew your words so thoroughly before spitting them out, James,” she says. She’s the only one who calls him James. “What is it?”

“Um,’ Bucky says. “It just. Um.”

“For God’s sake,” Peggy says. “Were you always this tongue-tied? Steve seems to think you have a way with words.”

“Yeah, well it’s harder to talk to you. About things like… thing I’d talk to Steve about, you know,” Bucky says, and sighs. “When we lived in Brooklyn, he did makeup for the drag acts on the docks. He was real good at it too, but even he needed practice. So I was his practice. I liked it a lot. He’d practice more’n he strictly needed to because I liked it. He’d bring home all these different colours, and it didn’t matter if I looked like a clown or a freak at the end of it. Felt good.”

He’s sitting up now, and Peggy’s forgotten about her makeup. He kind of laughs at her expression.

“You knew we’re queer as a French holiday, Carter. What gives?”

“Well, I’d always thought he would wear the makeup,” Peggy admits.

“He did. Had this fucking beautiful lipstick he’d wear. Nothing showy though. Didn’t like it as much as I did,” Bucky says, and chews on another thought before saying. “As I do.”

“Do you want me to pretty you up?” Peggy says. Bucky seems relieved that he doesn’t have to ask and nods so quickly his head might fall off his neck. “Oh, darling. Come here. Did Steve teach you how to do any of this?”

“That wasn’t the point. He was supposed to be practicing. Not me. Never comes out right when I try anyway,” Bucky says. His knee is jiggling in an obvious nervous tell.

“I suppose we’re not all artistically inclined like our mutual friend. Now close your eyes,” Peggy says.

Bucky does, his eyes barely moving while Peggy painstakingly applies his eye makeup. He’s had this done many times before, sits so still while she does her work.

“You’re not going to wash this off right after we’re done,” she says firmly. “Good cosmetics are hard to come by, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, eyes still closed. “Wouldn’t dream of destroying your hard work without due cause, ma’am.”

“So polite. Why aren’t you this sweet all the time?” she giggles.

“Because you like it when I’m crude,” Bucky smirks.

“You rogue. Open your eyes. I want you to see,” Peggy says. He does, and Peggy is taken aback by how good his eyes look with makeup. He looks in the mirror for a second, a little surprised. “Did I do a good job?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, peering closer. “It’s more natural’n drag makeup. I look…”

He swallows that thought, throat bobbing, and turns to Peggy, looking more vulnerable than she has ever seen him.

“Lips too,” he says plaintively.

“Lips too,” Peggy says, and leans over and kisses him. The waxy sweetness of her lipstick and the taste of her mouth is heaven.

\--

Nobody, not even the Winter Soldier, knows why he applies his own tactical makeup. It looks a little like child’s play when he does it, haphazardly smeared all around his eyes, and it’s a waste of paint. Maintenance of the Soldier predicates no waste, but this is a notable exception.

It is also a headache for the ones responsible for his return to the ice. The Soldier must be clean when he’s put into cryostasis, but doesn’t like it when his maintainers try to wash off the eye makeup.

Really doesn’t like it.

“Stop wasting my time,” Pierce says, arms crossed.

The Soldier stands against the wall, heaving and shirtless. His eyes are covered with the damn makeup, and his hand is buried in the wall. He won’t attack Pierce; his made up eyes are cast to the ground and there are guns trained on him. Behind the guns, the man who tried to do maintenance on the Soldier nurses a snapped wrist.

“Wash it off yourself,” Pierce continues, jaw tightening, and points to the basin and the washcloth laid out by the chair. The Soldier averts his gaze further, refusing to look at the chair. “Wash. It. Off.”

The Soldier walks over, each step leaden. Then he takes the washcloth in his flesh hand and dips it in the bowl. When all the makeup is gone from his face, he drops the cloth back on the table and looks back at Pierce.

“Now get in the chair,” Pierce says. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

The Soldier looks positively miserable, but there is a sense of defiance in his shoulders as he sits in the chair that Pierce will utterly destroy in the next few minutes. There’s still a streak of black just above his cheekbone. When he is more compliant someone can rub it off.

After the wipe, the Soldier’s mouth is slack and his eyes glazed over with their distance. He is crying, and nobody seems to notice until it makes a trail through that streak of makeup. A technician (the Soldier doesn’t have doctors, he has technicians and engineers) wipes it away with a soft cloth meant for spectacles.

\--

Steve confides in Sam that Bucky doesn’t come out for most visitors, that Sam is an exception. Sam is skeptical that it’s his presence which is the catalyst for Bucky’s sudden attempts at sociability, but it is true when he comes by Steve’s for tea, Bucky creeps out of his room and sits at the table. His eyes mostly stay planted on the tabletop, though he takes tea and sometimes the cookies that come with it.

He looks smaller without the arm, which had to come off after he’d been poisoned by one of the arm’s failsafes meant for the possibility of the Asset going rogue. He’s still thin from that, and the withdrawal, and the dreams. It’s difficult to consolidate this haggard, withdrawn guy with the machine that tore off Sam’s wings over the Potomac.

Sam’s pretty sure that he’s never heard Bucky talk. He’s not unfriendly to Sam, though; he actually manages a smile most of the days Sam comes around. Smiles are a monumental effort for Bucky, according to Steve, and Sam feels flattered by the attention.

But Sam comes on a bad day for Bucky. He’s sitting on the couch, blanket draped around his shoulders and staring beyond the television. Sam knows that look, has seen it himself, and turns to Steve, who is chewing his thumbnail. They go to the kitchen for some tea.

“How long has he been like this, Steve?” Sam asks.

“Just since this morning,” Steve says. “Sometimes he wakes up and he’s just…”

He trails off and sighs.

“You asked me what made me happy once,” he says. “And right then, I didn’t know. But I knew what happy was. Sometimes I don’t think he _does_. He’s been through so much, Sam, and that’s why I gotta stay with him, but I sometimes wonder if I’m helping at all.”

Steve looks so frustrated, stirring his tea and brow furrowed. It’s at this moment that Bucky walks in and takes a cookie, trailing the blanket behind him. He still looks spaced out but he’s moving and now eating.

“Hey, are you headed back to bed?” Steve asks. Bucky looks back and blinks slowly.

“Got…” he says, and trails off. Steve waits patiently for his words to catch up to his thoughts. Ever since HYDRA fiddled with Bucky’s brain, that’s been a hard battle for him. Sam feels his gut clench because it isn’t fair that someone should be mired up in words and thoughts together because HYDRA wanted a living weapon.

Finally Bucky sighs, and makes a curt and deliberate motion with his hands over his eyes, then his lips. Sam has no idea what that means, but judging by how Steve propels to his feet and heads towards the bathroom, it’s just Sam who’s in the dark.

“Yeah, don’t know why I bought it,” Steve says, coming back with a black matte case and setting it on the table. Bucky’s eyes rivet to the case immediately with more interest than Sam has seen in all his visits before, and Steve doggedly tries to explain. “Don’t wear it nearly as often as I used to. Guess it’s just ‘cause I can. We could never afford that sort of stuff back then, but now, I got seventy years of back pay and more choices than ever.”

“What is it, exactly?” Sam asks.

“Makeup,” Steve says with the brightest smile, as though this was a totally natural occurrence, and turns back to Bucky. “Eyes first?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“Lips then?”

Another resolute headshake, and Bucky points to Sam.

“I can go if it’s better,” Sam says to Bucky, who shakes his head a third time, points to him and then points to the makeup. “Oh! Okay then.”

And that’s how Sam finds himself in a kitchen chair for maybe an hour while Bucky stares at him intently, steady hand applying makeup that, much to Sam’s surprise, suits him.

“Huh,” he says, examining himself in the mirror and wondering why Bucky knows how to do a perfect smoky eye, and how he got it looking so good with just one hand. “Thanks a lot, dude.”

“Peggy was on the television,” Bucky mutters, probably the most cohesive sentence Sam’s heard him string together. “Miss her.”

“She misses you too, Buck,” Steve says, and there’s only a hint of melancholy in his big smile. Bucky nods, looks at Sam for a while longer, and then leaves to his room, blanket trailing behind him.

\--

It’s a while before Bucky wants makeup on his own skin again. Something about the memory of its texture sends him into bad memories, of sticky blood and sweat on his face and then botched blackout that was meant to protect his eyes from the sun but he wore for years regardless of the mission.

Bucky believes Steve when he says they were best friends, before anything else. Steve is always there, even if he’s not always patient, even if he cries sometimes (because he’s sad _and_ happy, Bucky can’t understand this bit very well at all) and even though Bucky is sure he’s a burden before being a friend.

But the day Bucky decides he wants to try makeup again, he finds Steve ready with a palette of blues and green already laid out. Bucky’s brow furrows and he picks a blue up that reminds him of the ocean.

“You wanted to try blues and greens before,” he says. He uses before as a catch-all for everything that happened before he was turned into a weapon. Steve smiles.

“I couldn’t really see the difference between them when I promised you that,” he says. “Looked like grays and browns to me. And then I could see all sorts of colours I couldn’t before, and I saw the colour of your eyes clearly for the first time on that march back to camp. Do you remember that?”

Bucky remembers it a little, nods slightly.

“Anyway, I didn’t really get a chance to after that, but when I got out of the ice, even when I thought I wouldn’t see you again,” Steve says, and falters. “well. I was thinking about what colours would suit. Um, you can choose.”

Bucky presses the ocean one in Steve’s hand and smiles.

\--

Invitations to join the Avengers have been declined, and acceptance into a state college has been tentatively put on the fridge.

Sometimes Bucky looks in the mirror and sees a person who would not be out of place on a college campus, in a library, confident and happy. Other times Bucky is breaking apart and missing vital pieces and a mess and worries about being one of those men he sees on the news that rips apart college campuses and can’t even bear to leave his room.

Not the morning he starts though. No, that morning he has all his notepads and textbooks in a neat pile with his pencil case and two shirts laid out on the bed. One is a long black tee, one that pins up rather nicely on his side, and the other one is short sleeved and a dark purple.

Bucky likes the purple one a lot, but wishes the sleeves were a bit longer for the first day.

“Hey,” Sam says, telegraphs that he wants to touch Bucky well in advance of actually doing it. Bucky returns the hug and turns back to his dilemma, smiling a bit when Sam kisses his cheek.

“First impressions are hard to anticipate,” he mumbles in explanation. Sam’s the one who made him comfortable enough to use his words again, when he wants to. Sam’s wonderful. “I don’t want to be scary.”

“You’re not scary,” Sam says. Bucky raises an eyebrow and Sam laughs. “You’re only a little bit scary.”

“I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re unsafe,” Bucky says.

“Put on the purple one,” Sam says. “You look good in the purple one, even if it’s totally mine. Look, I got you something.”

He presents Bucky with a tube of shimmery lipgloss that promises to smell like strawberries, though these days Bucky has grown to like the synthetic strawberry smell as much as the real kind.

“Just a little thing for your first day,” Sam says. “I could do your hair like you had it the other week, too, if it makes you feel better.”

It does make Bucky feel better, to have the intricate braiding on the side of his head exposing the undercut Sam shaved for him. The overly sweet lipgloss grounds him somewhat, and stays with him even as he’s taking his seat for his first lecture in a crowded auditorium. The girl beside him hasn’t even spared him a second glance beyond asking if the seat beside him was taken. He smiles, and opens his notepad. He’s ready.


End file.
